


Svadilfari and the Towers of Asgard

by icarus_chained



Category: Norse Mythology
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Steampunk, Coercion, Gen, Magitech, Racism, Threats, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-21
Updated: 2012-06-21
Packaged: 2017-11-08 06:26:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/440142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the hall of Valhalla, at the center of the great plateau city of Asgard, a small, fox-faced man stood on the balcony, and looked with trepidation out to the great clouds of steam and the roar of metal at the edges of the city.</p>
<p>Flavour piece, written for a prompt. Norse myth steampunk magitech AU, based on the myth of Sleipnir's birth. *grins* And yes, I am a crazy person.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Svadilfari and the Towers of Asgard

In the hall of Valhalla, at the center of the great plateau city of Asgard, a small, fox-faced man stood on the balcony, and looked with trepidation out to the great clouds of steam and the roar of metal at the edges of the city. His hands, on the brass railings, were white-knuckled.

“I see you have witnessed our hrimthurs’ efforts,” came a voice behind him, calm and even, almost unconcerned. Loki, for so the man was, stiffened, and his hands, impossibly, held tighter. “He has much to thank you for, our builder.”

“Majesty,” the trickster murmured, turned to face the other man. Turned to look his adopted brother in the eye. “Odin. You know I did not intend this. You know I meant Asgard no harm.”

Odin, grim-faced and saturnine, only looked at him. The bright, chill blue of his natural eye steady on Loki’s face, the strange green of his biomechanical one fixed instead on the distant roar of industry. “Allow him his machine, you said,” the god-king said softly. “Allow him his little golem. It can do no harm. What can a frost giant have to threaten us? What industry could possibly come from the Frozen Lands? Isn’t that what you said?”

Loki flinched. “I did not know,” he repeated, desperately, unable to meet that mismatched stare. “Why should I have thought differently? Nothing moves in Niflheim, nothing comes out from it. They are _frozen_. What technology could they possibly have had to challenge the Empires of Asgard? The most technologically advanced society in the Nine Kingdoms?”

Odin smiled. At least, that might have been the intention. His lips parted, anyway, a cold slash of dark amusement. “And yet,” he said, almost gently, as he waved out to the cliffs beyond the edge of the city. “Yet he raises his wall. Yet daily, on the back of his great machine, this Svadilfari, he raises the pillars, and brazen skin soon after. The Climbing Towers, they call them in the city. The golden skin. Within a month, less, he shall be finished. And what then, Loki? What then?”

Loki turned to him, wringing his hands in his desperation, the intricate crown of gears about his face flickering as his light-cloak responded fitfully to his distress. His one gift, that cloak, the one thing that set him apart, beyond his parentage, and the sly turning of his tongue.

“I did not know,” he whispered, softly, and without much hope, into the cold impassiveness of Odin’s gaze. “What can I do, when I did not know?” His expression hardened, some flare of defiance. “It was you who made the bet, not I! You, who promised him Freya, the jewel of our crown, as the price for his wall, and the defence of our mines. You made the promises! Should not _you_ explain to her who her new husband is …”

He cut off, choking, as Odin’s hand closed around his throat. His light-cloak flared to life, raw shimmers of illusion sweeping across him, painting the encircling hand in iridescent colours, but illusion couldn’t save him here. 

“I promised nothing,” Odin said, quietly. Still without passion, still without breaking calm. “Nothing I ever intended to give. Nothing I ever would have _had_ to give, had you not so foolishly allowed him his biomechanical beast of burden.” He smiled, softly. “The fault, Loki, lies with you. And, therefore, so does the solution.”

Loki swallowed desperately against the press of his hand. “What do you mean?”

Odin smiled, releasing him casually, and looked up, his green eye flicking over, dancing jerkily in its socket, to fix on Loki’s crown of gears. “Do not think me a fool, brother,” the god-king said, quietly. “I know full well your little tricks, your secret technologies, do more than play with light.” He smiled, faintly. “Alchemy, is it not? Transmutation, I think. The force of runes is mine, the knowing of things, but the _changing_ of them … That is yours, is it not?”

Loki fell still. Back pressed to the brass railings, the steam of the hrimthurs’ building behind him. He grew still, and the look in his eyes, the expression on his narrow face, was not fear, but cold defiance, and some glimmer of warning. 

“What is mine is mine, brother,” he said, very softly. “That, of all things, you must not forget.”

Odin only smiled, dark and amused, and stepped back with a small bow before his blood-brother. “As you say, Loki. As you say. And, since it _is_ yours, since you alone may use it … You will use it in our defence, will you not? You will fix the mistake you made, won’t you?”

Loki looked after him, trembling faintly. “You know what that will mean,” he said. Accused, rather. “You know what it will cost me.”

Odin’s expression finally darkened. Finally, after all his calm, grew thunderous. Though his voice, even still, was soft. “Not so much as failure will, brother mine. I promise you. Never so much as that.” A curl of his lip, dark and threatening. “Do we understand each other?”

Jaw set, cold, Loki nodded, and Odin’s smile returned, as amiable as before.

“Then I wish you luck, brother,” he waved, turned back indoors. “You should be at the Climbing Towers by evening, if you leave now. The frostkin and his beast should be beneath the north-western quarter.”

He walked away, opening the doors to the balcony, when Loki called him suddenly. When Loki, eyes glittering savagely, called after him.

“And then?” the trickster asked, coldly. “When he has lost, and you owe him nothing. Then?”

Odin’s parting smile was grim. “What we have always done, with a giant who has failed us.” He turned to look back at Loki, for the briefest of seconds, the smallest of windows. “Do you even have to ask, Loki? _Laufeyson_.”

No. No, Loki did not.


End file.
